Posts from August 2011

August 31, 2011

Lew Perdue has already taken Pepi to task for their website (article, website):

The Pepi site is quite possibly the worst winery web site ever.

But it's truly amazing to me that any professionally-managed web site has an internal link (i.e. one controlled by the winery itself) which generates a File Not Found (404) error.

So, I am amazed (as was Lew) to go to the Pepi site and get a 404 when I click on the Store Locator link. A link on the home page, not one hidden away somewhere. An important link if you want to actually buy some Pepi wine.

Jeez. You would think that checking for bad links is some sort of rocket science (Hint: it's not - Google's free Webmaster Tools will *tell* you if you have 404s on your site.)

Do you (or your Webmaster) run a regular check for bad links on your winery website?

If not, why?

(Looking at the Pepi News link on the site seems to indicate that the site hasn't been updated since 2009. So, not altogether surprising that it's broken. Anyone from Pepi out there want to comment?)

August 29, 2011

One of the biggest marketing errors I see wineries make is to promote something via AdWords or e-mail, and then direct people to their home page, rather than a landing page specifically tailored to convert the visitor.

I expect the reaction might have been more positive if they had donated all the money to charity (not just "making a donation from sales of this wine").

How does this pertain to winery websites? While there's a tiny announcement on the Lieb Family Cellars home page, it isn't linked to the page about the wines (or on the "Media Room" page, the other place you would expect to find it). Nope, it's buried two levels down under our wines and then Great Wines for Good Causes (and why is the wine "Great," but the cause only "Good?" Just sayin').

If you know (or hope) that a story (good or bad) about your wine is breaking, make the information you want people to see OBVIOUS.

August 15, 2011

Direct marketers (and wineries that successfully market direct-to-consumer) know that "it's all about the list."

Aside from new orders, your tasting room (if you have one), and events where you pour your wines, your website is the best source of new e-mail addresses for your list. So, why aren't you getting more (or any) signups from your website?

This visually-excellent article from the ElasticPath blog has one answer: the signup form for your list isn't getting enough love on your website. And they point out the value of testing its location as well.

August 12, 2011

Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant.

Substitute winery for restaurant and you're there. The wine business, in general, is about things being "just so," from the blending of juice to the look of the label. There are a lot of recovering type-A people in the biz.

There are other factors at work, as this quote points out:

﻿﻿"Say you're a designer and you've got to demo a site you've spent two months creating," Bohan explains. "Your client is someone in their 50s who runs a restaurant but is not very in tune with technology. What's going to impress them more: Something with music and moving images, something that looks very fancy to someone who doesn't know about optimizing the Web for consumer use, or if you show them a bare-bones site that just lists all the information? I bet it would be the former—they would think it's great and money well spent."

which I think does a lot to explain why winery websites frequently fail to work well for visitors. And, as the article also points out, many designers get paid by the hour, so it's in their financial interest to create works of art, which may or may not meet the needs of visitors. (Hate mail from web designers in 3...2...1)

I understand the need for wineries to outsource their Web presence to third parties. It's just that the real measurement of a website -- its effectiveness in meeting the needs of visitors -- is (a) hard to measure, (b) not generally available for comparison, and (c) questioned by skeptical winery owners. So, important decisions about website design frequently come down to "Is it pretty?" or "Do I (the winery owner) like it?"

PS - If you missed Part I, it's here. Some possible fixes are here (including some great reader comments).

So, here are the first two things I would fix on any winery web site that's missing them. The first is easy, the second, not so much:

Install analytics. If you are trying to improve the performance (by whatever measure) of your website, you can't do it without some data. If you're not trying to improve, why are you reading this?

Make it trivially easy to make changes to your website. If not, it's almost a guarantee that it will become outdated. Also, it's vritually guaranteed you can't test changes in response to the data that analytics will bring.

If you've already got these covered, please leave a comment -- you deserve some recognition!

My experience is that these two items are missing on most winery websites, i.e. the 5,000+ wineries that fight for 10 percent of US wine sales. 90% of US wine, by volume, is sold by just 30 wineries. These "top 30" wineries can devote entire teams to making sure that their Web presence is instrumented and up-to-date (although that's certainly no guarantee).

Bonus: if you've already made the two fixes above, then the third fix is to make it glaringly obvious where and how people can buy your wine. My favorite example of this used to be Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyards, but unfortunately they seemed to have redesigned their website and dropped it (dumb!). Basically, you want site visitors to easily find out:

how to buy your wines direct (online, as part of a club, by phone, by fax, or at the winery)

what stores carry your wine,

what restaurants serve your wine, and even

other outlets that carry your wine (e.g. K&L, wine.com, etc.)

Yes, it's hard to list the specifc stores and restaurants, but the better the job you do at this, the more avenues you create for potential customers to try your wine. And yes, you'd like to get the direct sale, but maybe someone is looking for a wine that you no longer have available. Piss them off, or point them somewhere that can make them a happy camper? The choice is yours, and it speaks directly to your focus on making customers happy.

Note to cult wineries: even if people can't buy your wine, it doesn't hurt to explain that clearly and politely. Unless, of course, you just want to make people feel bad for not being "in the know."